This invention relates to the musical instrument art, and more particularly relates to a striking apparatus for a percussion instrument which is adapted to be operated by the foot of the musician and which is especially suitable for producing rapid sequences of beats.
As is well known to those skilled in the art, a variety of foot-actuated devices can be utilized to strike a percussion instrument such as a drum. For example, a common type of foot actuated striker includes a base, a beater hub pivotally mounted to the forward end of the base, and a pedal pivotally mounted at its heel end to the rearward end of the base. A spring is provided for urging the beater hub towards a retracted position. A flexible strap is wrapped partially around the beater hub and extends to the toe end of the pedal. In use, the stem of a mallet-like beater is affixed to the beater hub and the apparatus is placed in front of a drum.
Thus, when the operator depresses the pedal, the toe end of the pedal pulls on the strap and rotates the beater hub to move the beater forward into striking engagement with the drum and produce a beat. When the operator raises his foot, the spring restores the beater hub to its retracted position, thus wrapping the strap back onto the beater hub and raising the pedal, so that the apparatus is ready to be actuated again.
As will be readily appreciated, such apparatus requires a complete up and down motion of the foot to produce each beat; the upstroke of the foot does not produce a beat, but merely allows the spring to reset the apparatus. Also, the speed of operation of the apparatus is limited by the speed with which the spring will restore the beater to its retracted position. If, immediately after a first beat, the musician attempts to produce a second beat before the apparatus is fully reset, the strap will become slack and the beater will only swing through part of its arc on the second beat. Therefore, the second beat will be far weaker than the first beat. Both of these factors make it difficult to produce a rapid sequence of beats by the use of such apparatus, and therefore make such apparatus unsuitable for playing extremely fast rhythms.
Various modified striker assemblies have been proposed to obviate the speed limitations of the conventional striker assembly described above. For example, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,618,441, issued Nov. 9, 1971 to J. A. Fearns, the conventional striker assembly described above is modified by providing a pedal which is pivotally mounted to the base at its center, so that the pivot lies between the heel portion of the pedal and the toe portion of the pedel. With this arrangement, the operator can rock the pedal about the pivot by alternately depressing the heel portion and the toe portion of the pedal to move the toe portion of the pedal up and down. The beater hub and strap are arranged so that either downward or upward motion of the toe porition of the pedal will pull the strap and rotate the beater hub and beater into striking position. Thus, the operator can produce a series of beats by a heel and toe action.
A variant of such apparatus is set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 1,508,390, issued Sept. 16, 1924 to W. D. Gladstone et al. In this variant, a system of rigid links is used instead of a flexible strap to link the toe portion of the pedal to the beater hub. However, the basic motion is the same as that of the apparatus taught by Fearns: the pedal is pivoted between its heel and toe portions, so that the operator may produce a series of beats by alternately depressing the heel portion and the toe portion of the pedal.
Mechanisms which incorporate such heel and toe actuation would theoretically be more suited to rapid operation than the conventional striker apparatus first described above, because only one stroke of the operator's foot is required to produce each beat. However, the heel and toe rocking motion requires the operator to pivot his foot about the center of his sole, and to move his entire foreleg up and down in a somewhat unnatural and fatiguing manner. Such motion is more difficult to accomplish than the simple ankle flexing motion required to actuate the conventional apparatus described above. Therefore, the heel-and-toe actuated apparatus described above has never achieved widespread acceptance by musicians.